capricious nerd / nerd teacher [books] reviewed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #2)
Questionable decisions.
3 stars
I have always wondered why anyone would hire Gilderoy Lockhart, and then I started working in international schools; it makes perfect sense because, when in need, they hire absolutely anyone without an actual care for their abilities or expertise. It's scary.
Only benefit of Lockhart: Snape's appearances in the novel decrease in order to show how incapable Lockhart is. Snape appears almost randomly to make a student miserable, still making me wonder why anyone at Hogwarts would've ever kept him around since he hates approximately 75% of his students so much.
Regarding Lockhart: If he was the only available candidate for the job, I would've added hours to my other teachers' duties and had them teach the bloody class together. All of this is being said as a secondary teacher who has taken on additional subjects because our only applicants are so unqualified (in some way) that they have less …
I have always wondered why anyone would hire Gilderoy Lockhart, and then I started working in international schools; it makes perfect sense because, when in need, they hire absolutely anyone without an actual care for their abilities or expertise. It's scary.
Only benefit of Lockhart: Snape's appearances in the novel decrease in order to show how incapable Lockhart is. Snape appears almost randomly to make a student miserable, still making me wonder why anyone at Hogwarts would've ever kept him around since he hates approximately 75% of his students so much.
Regarding Lockhart: If he was the only available candidate for the job, I would've added hours to my other teachers' duties and had them teach the bloody class together. All of this is being said as a secondary teacher who has taken on additional subjects because our only applicants are so unqualified (in some way) that they have less of a right teaching them than I do.
One of the things I would've liked to have seen was more focus on the Malfoys (less so Draco, more so Lucius); Dobby's appearances, as a stand-alone text, feel weird and out of place. He feels superfluous to the story, only acting as a random events to Harry. If it didn't set things up later, I'd be really frustrated with Dobby's existence.
